Attachment Flashcards
Attachment
An emotional link between the child and their primary caregiver, which ties them together
Four ways an attachment can be tested?
- Seeking Proximity
- Distress on separation
- Joy on reunion
- General Behaviour
What is a bond?
A bond is a set of feelings that ties one person to another
Benefits of an attachment
Survival
Food
Love
Security
Two caregiver-infant interactions are…
Reciprocity and Interactional Synchrony
What is reciprocity?
a description of how two people interact, the mother infant interaction is reciprocal in that they both respond to each others signal and each shows a response from the other.
What is interactional synchrony?
Where mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of one another and do this in a co-ordinated manner.
Schaffer and Emerson
Schaffer and Emerson (1964) studied 60 babies from Glasgow at monthly intervals for the first 18 months of life using a longitudinal method. Results revealed that attachments were most likely to form with carers who were sensitive to the baby’s signals, rather than the person they spent the most time with.
Asocial stage
(0-6 weeks)
Similar responses to objects & people. Preference for faces/ eyes.
Indiscriminate attachments
(6 weeks – 6 months)
Preference for human company. Ability to distinguish between people but comforted indiscriminately.
Specific
(7 months +)
Infants show a preference for one caregiver, displaying separation and stranger anxiety. The baby looks to particular people for security, comfort and protection.
Multiple
(10/11 months +)
Attachment behaviours are displayed towards several different people eg. siblings, grandparents etc.
Strengths of Stages of Attachment
The observational study had high ecological validity because the infants were observed in their homes. This means that the findings are more accurate as the babies were behaving naturally.
Weakness of the Stages of Attachment
The sample consisted of only 60 Glasgow working families; it is not representative of a broader population, and therefore the results are not generalisable to the wider population.
Role of the father (Bowlby) AO1
Bowlby (1988)
Reasoned that if patterns of attachment are a product of how their mother has treated them, it could be anticipated that the pattern he develops with his father is the product of how their father has treated them. Bowlby suggests that fathers can fill a role closely resembling that filled by a mother but points out that in most cultures this is uncommon. Bowlby argues that in most families with young children, the father’s role tends to be different. According to Bowlby, a father is more likely to engage in physically active and novel play than the mother and tends to become his child’s preferred play companion.
Role of the father (Grossman) AO1
Conducted a longitudinal study of 44 families comparing the role of fathers’ & mothers’ contribution to their children’s attachment experiences at 6,10 and 16 years. Fathers’ play style (whether it was sensitive, challenging and interactive) was closely linked to the fathers’ own internal working model of attachment. Play sensitivity was a better predictor of the child’s long-term attachment representation than the early measures of the of attachment type that the infant had with their father.
Role of the father AO3
Studies such as MacCallum and Golombok 2004, have found that children growing up in same sex or single parent families do not develop any differently from those with heterosexual or two parent families. This contrasts Grossman’s and Bowlby’s findings, suggesting that the father as a secondary attachment figure is not important. The approach they are taking to finding the role of the father (and ultimately their understanding of that question in its entirety) leads to inconsistent findings.
Learning theory of attachment
The learning theory of attachment explains how children become attached to their mother (or parents) through the process of classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Children ‘learn’ to attach to their mother by associating their mother with food, and the pleasure they receive from being fed.
Learning theory of attachment weakness
Evidence from Harlow contradicts the learning theory of attachment. Harlow found that baby monkeys spent more time with a soft towelling monkey (which did not provide food), in comparison to a wire monkey which did provided food. This suggests that baby monkeys do not form attachments based on food, but actually prefer ‘contact comfort’. This goes against the learning theory of attachment which suggests that children attach on the basis of an association forming between the mother and food.
Learning theory of attachment weakness
The theory and research is largely based on studies using non-human participants. Learning theorists argue that the principles of learning are the same in humans and animals; however, many psychologists argue that not all human behaviours can be explained in terms of conditioning, especially attachment. For example, psychologists like Bowlby argue that attachments are a complex behaviour that is an adaptive behaviour that aids survival. This suggests that the learning theory of attachment presents an overly simplified view of attachment, and many psychologists argue that attachment is far more complex than an infant forming an association between a mother and food.
Harlow’s monkey study
Harlow found that baby monkeys spent more time with a soft towelling monkey (which did not provide food), in comparison to a wire monkey which did provided food. This suggests that baby monkeys do not form attachments based on food, but actually prefer ‘contact comfort’.
Harlow’s monkey study eval
Harlow’s experiment on monkeys has ethical issues.
The monkeys were subject to psychological harm in the form of isolation and fear, something that should be avoided when conducting experiments.
Harlow’s monkey study eval
The heads of the two wire monkeys within Harlow’s study varied significantly which then acted as a confounding variable with the independent variable which is whether the monkey is clothed or not.
The findings of the study lack internal validity due to the drastic difference of the heads of the monkey. This could then suggest that the monkeys possibly choose one wire monkey over the other as they preferred the physical appearance of one monkey over the other.
Lorenz’s goose study
Lorenz (1935) using a clutch of gosling eggs divided them with one half once incubated seeing Lorenz as their first moving thing.
Lorenz later placed the marked ducklings together to show which had imprinted on the duckling’s mother and Lorenz and they quickly divided themselves up. The animals exposed to Lorenz during the critical period of imprinting.
